We hope all you ecommerce pros and online merchants have started 2014 off with a bang! We’ve been busy here at Building Keystones creating content about pricing strategies, strengthening affiliate marketing relationships, and defining the essential KPIs for your online cart.
For January’s Ecommerce Digest we’re pointing you to information on the state of IT spending from Gartner, advice on optimizing your checkout process, email marketing stats and when to deploy marketing campaigns.
State Of The Software Market
Growth Returns To Tech | New York Times Bits Blog
“Investment is coming from exploiting analytics to make B2C processes more efficient and improve customer marketing efforts. Investment will also be aligned to B2B analytics … The focus is on enhancing the customer experience throughout the presales, sales and post sales processes.” – Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner
IT spending is growing, which should make most of our readers happy. They should also be happy to know that Gartner is saying that the biggest growth in spending will happen in the enterprise software market. As we said in our Ecommerce Predictions 2014, a lot of that growth will come from software that helps turn data into better business decisions.
Enclosing The Checkout Process
Enclosing The Checkout Process | Econsultancy
The question of how to create the best possible checkout process isn’t answered with a single solution. This article from Econsultancy offers a specific tactic known to help merchants reduce cart abandonment: enclosing the checkout process. In an enclosed checkout process, once a visitor chooses a product and begins the checkout process, certain parts of your site like the navigation menu are replaced by more customer service oriented elements like contact information and breadcrumb navigation. This tactic of enclosing the checkout process minimizes distractions and creates a more focused customer experience.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing Statistics For 2014 | ExpressPigeon
This post from ExpressPigeon, an email marketing service provider, gives a comprehensive curation of email marketing statistics from industry thought leaders. It provides statistics on every important aspect of email marketing from ROI to subject lines to list deliverability. If you’re looking for hard data to convince your boss to amp up email marketing efforts in 2014, this list is a good place to start.
Timing Your Marketing Efforts
Tips for Timing Your Ecommerce Marketing | HubSpot
Marketing isn’t only about what content you send to customers. It’s also about when you send that content. For B2B companies, sending an invitation to a webinar in the afternoon may be quite effective for gaining new sales, whereas a B2C company might want to send promotional emails to their list in the evening. This post offers a number of different tips for finding the perfect time to deliver your marketing content and also analyzes each tip for its pros and cons.
Looking for an ecommerce provider who helps you create the best possible checkout process for your customers? Contact cleverbridge now!
